


The Box

by Feynite



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Pandora - Freeform, Prometheus - Freeform, mythology AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-20
Updated: 2015-11-20
Packaged: 2018-05-02 14:00:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5250758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feynite/pseuds/Feynite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say that once, long ago, there was no evil in the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Box

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, one of my beloved readers requested a Mythology AU; sort of a more direct Hades/Persephone type thing than the TDWH AU actually offers, or an Eros/Psyche type deal, or suchlike.
> 
> This… is not that story.
> 
> But it IS inspired by my musings on a mythology AU!

 

 

They say that once, long ago, there was no evil in the world.

The gods presided over the utopia of Elvhenan, and the people were ageless and beautiful and all things were splendid. A little dull, maybe. But splendid.

In this time, magic was the right only of the divine. The common folk (that being everyone who was not a god - high standards back then) could not use it; and its secrets were kept far from them, so that their power might never grow to contest that of the glorious evanuris. This was by decree of Elgar’nan, who feared the potential of the people, and all possible usurpers.

Now, some people might wonder if this type of paranoia and greedy power-hoarding was not, in some form or fashion, a sort of evil. 

Elgar’nan would certainly disagree with that assessment, however.

And most people were content to leave things as they were. It was paradise, after all. An ostensibly evil-free paradise. 

But tricksters are never truly content. They are the catalysts of change, and they chafe against even the most peaceful of containment. And they despise the conceit of their fellow gods. Even - or perhaps especially - when they have a fair amount of conceit themselves.

Just. You know. A different sort.

Such was the nature of Fen’Harel, the Dread Wolf, who travelled freely between the kingdoms of all the gods and the cities of the people, where he was known as Solas; a humble wanderer, full of questions and unexpected wisdom, and prone to hiding his magnificent physique beneath a lot of ugly vests and just sort of hoping no one noticed he had the body of a god.

A form of disguise which proved surprisingly effective.

It was Solas who whispered the gods’ secrets into the ears of the people. Bit by bit, and year by year, as the seasons changed, the tightly-bound magic of the evanuris began to spill further from its cage. _The gift of fire,_  the people called it; for with a word, the first mage set the torches of their village ablaze. And like fire, once the knowledge began to spread, it could never again be contained.

When Elgar’nan discovered what Fen’Harel had done, he was furious.

A thousand punishments he devised. All of them he deemed unworthy, until finally Mythal came to him, and gently told him to stop shouting his indecision across the heavens for everyone to hear.

“If viciousness will not suffice, then let justice serve instead,” she suggested. And though Elgar’nan was filled with wrath and rage, his fury was so blindingly stupid that he could make no choice. Fen’Harel remained free and unpunished, simply because no punishment seemed dire enough. But if vengeance was indecisive, then perhaps, yes; justice would serve.

Elgar’nan relented.

Mythal smiled.

She retreated to her spell chambers, and was at work for a long, long time. For days the door did not open. When the sun burned brightest, cold shadows would curl beneath the doorway; and when the moon was high, silvery light spilled out around the frame. It was fortunate that gods did not need to sleep very often or eat very much, and also that everyone knew better than to try and open the door.

When at last the mother of the evanuris emerged, she held in her hands a box.

It was a simple box. Unadorned, and yet strangely lovely. All who looked upon it found themselves fiercely curious of it. There was no mark upon its surface, save the simple latch at the front - a latch which stayed tightly closed, and yet looked very easily opened. That the sort of thing you would just absent mindedly flick open, just because it was there.

Before the courts of the evanuris, Mythal called Fen’Harel to her.

“At last we come to the matter of your judgement, my old friend,” said the mother goddess. She was very pleased with her own cleverness just then, and it showed.

“So it would seem,” Fen’Harel warily replied. He was fond of Mythal, as most were, but she was not generally considered to be a slouch in the punishments department.

The assembled gods watched with baited breath, wondering what might happen.

Bets had been made, and would be remade several times before the evening was done.

“The crime you have committed is one which has been deemed most heinous. But you bear only part of the blame. Knowledge cannot spread to those who refuse to witness it; and though you shared our secrets, it was the inquisitiveness of the People which allowed them to accept what they knew to be forbidden,” Mythal declared. “Therefore, we shall see if you share in their folly. This box I grant to you, with only two commands - keep it always, and never open it.”

She handed the box to Fen’Harel, then. He looked at it with a mixture of intense curiosity and sensible unease.

“I can promise you that if you never open this box, then everything shall remain as it is. You will face no further punishment. Your actions will not be repealed. The People will make what they will of the gift you have given them, and all shall be well,” Mythal explained.

“And if I open it?” Fen’Harel wondered.

“That, I cannot say,” the goddess replied.

The trickster frowned.

“What is inside?” he tried asking instead.

“That, I will not say,” Mythal told him.

A murmur of discontentment rippled through the assembled gods, for it seemed a very light punishment for so grievous a crime. Everyone was pretty sure she was playing favourites again. But Mythal would not be cowed; and so Fen’Harel left the court of judgement with his box and his freedom.

Clever as he was, the Dread Wolf supposed that nothing good would come of opening it. And yet, he wondered. By his very nature he found himself drawn to the question. His eyes would turn towards the latch, which was, in truth, the only feature for them to catch on. 

He tried hiding the temptation away, and putting it from his mind.

Yet it seemed to call to him.

So he found himself pulling it back out again, and looking at the latch once more. Strumming his hands upon the lid, and wondering if it was not, in fact, entirely empty.

The more he considered it, the more that possibility seemed likelier and likelier; that Mythal had given him an empty box, and his true punishment was to be driven slowly insane by the question ‘what is in the box?’ until he finally snapped and opened it, and the disappointment of the emptiness undid him.

As a punishment, that would fit.

A little unusual for Mythal, he thought, but perhaps she had been spending too much time with Dirthamen.

Yes. That was it. There was nothing in the box, and if he opened it, he could confirm that there was nothing in the box, and then simply keep it. His own private little joke. The box that was supposedly driving him insane but was ultimately harmless. Perhaps he would start keeping useful bits of string in it.

His hand drifted to the latch.

…Unless there was something terrible in the box.

A monster, perhaps. Or a curse. It was a small box, but magic could fit remarkable things into very limited spaces. An entire army could, perhaps, come flooding out of it, and do something exceptionally awful to him. Like string him up on a rock somewhere and let birds peck out his organs.

He moved his hand away from the latch.

By the time several hours had passed, his deliberations had reached a fevered pitch, and a few of the other gods had already lost their bets on how long it would take for him to crack.

Before the day passed into the next, however, Fen’Harel carried his box very far afield. In the deepest wilds, under the light of the moon, he placed it carefully upon the ground, and stared at it.

He drew his staff.

He turned the lock.

With the toe of his armoured boot, he nudged it open, and for an instant was fully convinced it contained nothing.

But the box, of course, was full of evil.

Ostensibly the first evil to appear in the world, if one wants to just sort of turn a blind eye towards the somewhat questionable qualities of the persons already involved in setting up this whole scenario.

Black clouds of torment spilled out of the opening, and carried Mythal’s punishment to the People. The gift of magic turned fleeting. The doorways to the realms of the gods slammed shut. Time came, and with it, mortality. The bliss of Elvhenan vanished, and everything changed.

By and large for the worse.

Fen’Harel cried out in despair as he realized what he had done.

The air whirled around him. The shadows deepened. The sky broke in two.

When the last evil fell from the box, moonlight shone upon the final thing left in it. A single emerald lay upon the bottom. As the light struck it, it sparked, and changed. A fierce magic came forth, and it was bright and very green. Fen’Harel reached for it. 

But before he could touch it, it was swept up in the wicked storm that preceded it, and carried away.

Knowing that light might be his only hope, the Dread Wolf sped after it.

Through the wilds and into the cities he ran, following the spread of evil, and the faintest glimmer of the light. Where he passed the people realized what had happened - or at least, that the disaster probably had something to do with him - and they cursed his name. They threw stones and darts and knives at him, and those who still could threw spells, until he was bloodied and exhausted and singed.

And yet, still he ran.

For years he chased his quarry across the globe.

At last the storm trailed into the south, through snowcapped mountains. By chance a young hunter saw the evil approach, and the Dread Wolf chasing it. And she saw, too, the light; and in that moment, she realized precisely what Fen’Harel had realized. That the light was the key.

And that it was beginning to fade.

So she climbed to the highest point of the mountains that she could reach, and when the storm struck them, she stood firm against it. The winds battered her, and wicked things tore at her. But she reached up, up and up, towards the light, and before the evil could spread further, she caught it in her palm.

It burned like a shard of the sun, and like all the magic that had been torn from the world had been tethered to it, somehow.

The hunter fell.

The Dread Wolf caught her.

When the two tumbled into the mountains, they found themselves entwined. Limbs tangled and faces close, and breaths mingling in the cold. They landed in the snow.

Up overhead, the storm which had been loosed from the box had stilled at last. The world was ravaged, but the hunter’s hand shone brightly with her prize. 

She looked at the Dread Wolf, who was bloodied and beaten and exhausted. And Fen’Harel looked back at her, and saw that she was much the same.

Few words could have marked their sentiments in that moment.

“Holy fucking shit,” the hunter summarized.

“Well said,” the Dread Wolf agreed.


End file.
